Yesterday, I am pleased to write that the first stage of the Prime Minister’s plan for living with Covid came into force as all remaining domestic Covid-19 restrictions in England were removed. Thanks to the success of our vaccine rollout, we are now able to bring our response to Covid-19 in line with other viruses and allow people to return to normal life. The Government remains ready to respond to the emergence of new variants through measures such as increased testing capacity or vaccines. Further protections are to be given to all adults over 75, residents in care homes, and immunosuppressed over 12s through an additional booster, ensuring that most vulnerable in society remain fortified against the virus.
National plans for improving further education have also been debated in Parliament through the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill this week. This legislation includes important proposals for local skills improvement plans. These plans would support collaboration between employers and education providers, to ensure that the education and training in our local schools is tailored to meet the needs of our local businesses. No matter what stage of life you are at, these plans will ensure that everybody is able to access a Lifelong Loan to support the development of new skills through four years of education over the age of 18 which can be used across your lifetime. This flexibility will provide broader options beyond a full-time three-year degree to show that it’s never too late to go back to school.
I was delighted to welcome the Minister for Culture, Nigel Huddleston MP to Grantham last week to see how the significant Government funding the town has received throughout the pandemic has been used. This includes £230,000 from the Culture Recovery Fund for the Guildhall, where we met with the Mayor and heard more about the thriving programme of events and exhibitions that the grant has helped to secure. The Minister was especially impressed by the magnificence of St Wulfram’s Church and enjoyed hearing about the various events that take place there including the upcoming presentation of the 1,300 year old skull of St Wulfram from the Abbey of St Wandrille in France.
After the recent inclement weather, we have yet again seen more accidents and closures along the A1. I am keen that everybody shares their views with me about their experiences of using the road to help inform my ongoing campaign for improvements to the safety measures along the stretch between Grantham and Stamford. Over the next few months I will seeking local views directly so that I can relay these to National Highways, the independent body responsible for our strategic roads.
I and a number of local residents are continuing to follow the planning process for the Mallard Pass Solar Farm and have surveyed the recently published scoping report which describes the process that will be undertaken to assess how the project will affect the local environment. Mallard Pass is just one of a number of solar farms which are currently being planned across Lincolnshire, both as locally-decided planning applications and nationally significant infrastructure projects.
This week, I asked Greg Hands MP, Minister for Energy to ensure that a national plan is put in place for solar developments which ensures that Lincolnshire is not dominated by a series of uncoordinated solar developments which threaten to take up agricultural land and disrupt local ecologies. Ultimately it is the independent Planning Inspectorate who advises the Government on national projects such as Mallard Pass, but I was pleased to put on public record the concerns many local people feel about the scale of the proposals being put forward.
Finally, and further afield, it is deeply regrettable that we are now seeing Russian tanks and troops entering the Ukraine, in an act of aggression without justification and in violation of international law. We will rightly now be imposing tough economic sanctions which will hurt Russia’s economic interests to ensure that Putin and his regime are punished. The situation remains fluid, but it remains my hope that a peaceful resolution can ultimately be found.
